A Nobel laureate who has experienced both good and evil at their outermost extremes has joined the Toronto Board of Rabbis and a handful of brave Canadian physicians in strongly criticizing the Harper government for its anti-refugee measures:

Mr. Wiesel, who survived the Auschwitz death camp to become a renowned scholar and political activist in the United States, said this week in a written statement obtained by The Globe and Mail that he stands in solidarity with the Toronto Rabbis. The rabbis said it is wrong for the government to designate some countries as being “safe” and to deny payments for medical treatments obtained by asylum seekers from those places.

“As a former refugee, together with the Toronto Board of Rabbis, I feel morally compelled to remain on the side of other uprooted men and women everywhere,” said Mr. Wiesel, who was a keynote speaker two years ago at a conference on anti-Semitism in Ottawa that was organized with the help of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, the minister behind the refugee reforms. “Today, as yesterday, a nation is judged by its attitude towards refugees,” Mr. Wiesel wrote.

Indeed it is. And here in Canada, where rank bigotry is now official government policy, the judgement will not be a kindly one.